Saturday, March 3, 2018

The last two Fridays in a
row I tried to get an online game together to play The Esoterrorists to no
avail. My friend Eric Lamoureux suggested I write a review because maybe people
don't quite know what it is all about. I'll explain more about it later but in
a nutshell it's about secret agents reacting to threats posed by occult
terrorists throughout the globe. I almost liken it to modern Cthulhu type
cultists trying to bring these ancient old ones through the thin veil into our
world in order to harness the power for themselves. This game uses the GUMSHOE
system and I'm also thinking a lot of folks out there don't know much about it.
Sure, you may have heard about it before but you're not familiar with the
mechanics. I'll also give a brief overview on some of those as well.

First of all, what is this secret organization and what role do
the players play in this game? I'm glad you asked. You are elite paranormal
investigators working as part of a secret organization known as Ordo Veritatis
(Order of Truth). This organization operates in a cell structure on a worldwide
basis. Sometimes you are sent out to recruit new assets for the order,
occasionally you might be tasked to search and rescue a missing member of the
order, but usually you are thwarting the Esoterrorists attempts to weaken the
membrane that separates our world from the outer dark. While not operating in
the field for the order, you go about your normal daily lives doing your normal
mundane jobs. It's your job to protect the innocent, unknowing public from ever
hearing about the wickedly evil creatures threatening the world. In fact,
that's a part of every mission called the veil out.

As a field agent in Ordo Veritatis, you are somewhat familiar with
your teammates. I say somewhat because you never truly know someone in your
line of work. You may even recall who recruited and trained you but for the
most part you are unfamiliar with who is above you in the chain of command. Mr.
Verity is your mission briefer. Sometimes it is a man and other times it’s a
woman. The only thing certain is that it's never the same person. You are
familiar however with the immediate structure of the organization above you.
Field agents who get compromised can't have too much information after all.
Your briefer is usually a senior staffer. The staffers are the ones who do the
pre-mission research. It's their job to find the jobs. Once a report is deemed
viable, the senior staffer puts together the briefing and recalls the most
suitable team. You might be in the middle of interrogating a drug addict when
the text message comes in or perhaps you're boiling the burned skin off a human
skull in order to reconstruct the face for facial recognition software when the
message comes in. Again, the only thing certain is you immediately drop what you’re
doing to meet at the provided rendezvous point.

Being a secret agent isn't all it’s cracked up to be. You are of
course one of the good guys therefore you do have a certain ethical requirement
to adhere to. You are to protect your teammates and human life in general.
Protecting the values and morals of civil society and the order are inherent to
the job. Things you are prohibited from include assassination human enemies,
use excessive force, torture, cause public distress, and of course treason. One
caveat is that Outer Dark Entities (ODE's) who possess a human form are exempt
from the ethical code. Conversely, in rare cases you can also contact Mr.
Verity to apply for a Warrant of Exigency (permission to violate the ethical
code). These are usually denied though. Ok, I think you get the jist of the
order. Let's move on to the Esoterrorists now.

Simply stated, the Esoterrorists are an international conspiracy
organization with a structure far different than your own. They are power
bankers bent on obtaining even more power or they could be your backwoods
cannibals causing fear and unrest in the world. This public fear and confusion
is what thins the membrane which separates our world from the outer dark. When
the membrane thins enough, these terrorists poke holes into it and bring forth
an entity. This is their attempt to harness the magical power that is inherent
to the entities. As of yet, none have succeeded in grasping this power but they
still try. They could have come across an old misplaced photograph of a
creature and the image calls to them. As they gaze upon the artifact it starts
to swirl around and become all too real to them. The image comes alive and
takes over their mind, urging them to thin the membrane enough to come through while
promising magical powers to the unsuspecting victim. Or something like that.

They may not be behind mass murders like the school shootings
rampant in the news today but they are perpetuating the despair by keeping it
in the news and in the faces of the public. This type of fear and confusion is
what drives the Esoterrorists movement. This movement dates back to the
Victorian era where rituals and evocations were rampantly practiced. Back then
it was mostly nothing more than parlor tricks but today it is very real and
these terrorists are doing everything they can to "enlighten" the
public. Their power feeds off of the fear. Places where general public fear and
unrest is high in the world is where the Esoterrorists will be. Fortunately for
us this is fairly easy to spot via news feeds and intercepted satellite
communications.

So what is this GUMSHOE system? Great question!

GUMSHOE is the system that was designed to solve the problem of
what happens when you fail your notice roll. The game stalls because you didn't
get that all revealing important clue. With GUMSHOE you always get the clues
necessary to advance the story. This system is more narrative based with simple
combat options. Some people say the combat is too simple and that's why they
don't like it. Well then, I say to you, have you read The Esoterror Factbook?
This gives you a crunchier set of combat rules for those of you who want the
tactical aspect of a game to come alive. Ah, but I'm getting off topic now.
Let's get back to the basic rules of GUMSHOE shall we. Oh, I should also
mention that I'll be looking at the rules for specifically The Esoterrorists as
other GUMSHOE games may change the rules slightly.

Let's take a look at The Esoterrorists character sheet first. It's a fairly
simple sheet with character name, off-duty occupation, weapons, and abilities.
Wait, no hit points or armor class, what the heck? Yes and no. You see, hit
points in this game is called Health and is covered under abilities. Armor is
used to reduce damage taken not to avoid getting hit. Certain types of armor
will reduce damage from gunshot wounds such as a Kevlar vest.

There are two types of abilities, General and Investigative.
Depending on how many players there are you will have anywhere from 20-32
points to spend on Investigative abilities. Regardless of group size you will
have 60 points to spend on General abilities. Next to each ability is a column
for Rating and Pool. Rating is your investigators skill level and Pool is how
many points are available to spend on using that ability. If you have at least
one point in an ability you are considered an expert in that. At the beginning
of each mission your Rating and Pool should be equal. Throughout the game your
Pool will decrease but not your Rating. These abilities are split up because
Investigative abilities will refresh at a different rate than General
abilities. During the course of a mission that may take 3 game sessions, your
Investigative abilities might not refresh but some of your General abilities
will.

The two most important abilities are Health and Stability. Your
Health ability tracks how well your character is doing physically and Stability
tracks how well you character is doing mentally. Both of these abilities can be
reduced below 0 all the way to -12. Once you go below 0 there are consequences.
For Health you need to make a consciousness roll when you reach -0 to -5, and
again at -6 to -11. Each of these tiers offers an additional consequence to
just simply staying awake. At -0 to -5 you are Hurt, you cannot
spend points on Investigative abilities and difficulty numbers increase by 1.
At -6 to -11 you are Seriously Wounded, you are no longer able to
fight and will bleed out unless someone performs a successful Medic check to
stabilize your wounds. At -12 you’re dead, make a new character. Stability has
these same tiers labeled Shaken 0 to -5 (difficulty numbers
increase by 1), and you acquire a mental illness at -6 to -11. When you reach
-12 you are incurably insane. You can commit one last crazy act or choose to be
a drooling sack of flesh for the rest of the characters life.

As I said earlier, all important clues are free and will be given
to you but there is also a chance to obtain more clues. These additional clues
are not pertinent to move the story forward but they allow the players to shine
for a moment. The additional clues can be obtained by spending points from your
investigative ability pools. The players should narrate what the character is
doing, what ability they are using, and how many points they will spend to get
the extra clues. It's not uncommon for new players to have difficulty with this
aspect of the game and the GM should then tell the players "for this many
points in this ability you may be able to get some insight on the
matter."

Alright, let's move on to combat. The rules for combat are simple.
Determine initiative by who has the highest rating in Scuffling or Shooting
depending on what they want to do during combat. This is group based. If any
one of the PC's has the highest rating then all of the PC's act before the bad
guys and vice versa. This doesn't change from round to round once its
established. The book recommends to just go around the table from left to right
when it's the players turn. During the GM's turn he is free to determine which
NPC acts at that time and in any order. I think I would take the PC's turn
sequence a step further. Let them decide who goes on their turn. That always
makes for a more collaborative and fun experience on their part. I also find it
engages the players more knowing they can change who goes when.

In order to hit an opponent, we need to talk about Hit Threshold.
All PC's start with a Hit Threshold of 3 but if your Athletics ability is 8 or
higher then the Hit Threshold increases to 4. What does this mean? Well, when
my cannibal cultist tries to attack you he will roll a single d6. If he rolls a
3 he will hit you if your Hit Threshold is 3 but will miss if your Hit
Threshold is 4. Or will he? Let’s say the cannibal cultist is trying to claw
your knife hand and decides to spend 2 Pool points of Scuffling. He rolls a 3
but now gets to add 2 to the roll for a total of 5. The cannibal just clawed at
your forearm and now gets to roll damage which is again a single d6. Shooting a
gun acts exactly the same way. The only difference between the two are the
damage effects. A punch or kick is -2 to the damage roll, a small or improvised
weapon is -1 to the damage roll, a larger club or light firearm applies 0 to
the damage roll, a sword or heavy firearm adds +1 to the damage roll, and
when firearms are fired at point blank range a +2 is added to the damage
roll. Don't forget that if your Health or Stability is 0 to -5 then the attack
difficulty just increased as well.

These are the overall very basics to GUMSHOE. Simple right? I
think so. Now let’s talk about what happens when you complete the mission. You
just stopped the cannibals from bringing an entity through the membrane but now
have all these dead corpses just laying around. What do you do about that?
That's what the Veil-Out is. You as a group need to figure out a way to explain
what happened to the world in a way that doesn't raise suspicion and keeps any
evidence from reaching the public's attention.

If I were asked to describe The Esoterrorists using movie references
then I would say imagine you are Harry Tasker in True Lies but
your employer is the Illuminati. Now add in The
Void and you'll have it.